Have you never considered that I just joined GOG now? That I've never used GOG before?

Yes, I considered that that could be the case, and I'm not arguing, even though your first post was complaining about price difference, and non-acceptance of CAD only came up later.

Really you have nothing to prove to me or anyone else. If you think non-acceptance of CAD should be a reason to buy from Steam out of principle, then go ahead. I really (no sarcasm here) admire principled people. I just hope that you'll remember your principles and still buy from Steam even when the situation changes, CAD becomes stronger and Steam's regional pricing no longer works in your favour.

I have a match!

Your butt and my face!

Wait a minute...

Nice way to welcome a new user and your proud of this?
Reported.

But the price difference is always 2-3% (the fee for currency conversion), assuming GOG's regional pricing is equal to the exchange rate (which, on average, is probably is,) no matter the dollars' values.

Whether the Canadian dollar is worth a US penny or a US 100 dollar bill, it's the same price increase of 2-3% compared to if they offered purchases in CAD.

So I don't understand why you seem to think that the strength of the CAD has any bearing on how beneficial it is to pay in CAD or USD. Why do you think I'd care less about GOG's lack of CAD if the dollars were equal?

If GOG doesn't offer CAD, it's always 2-3% higher than if they offered CAD, no matter the exchange rate.

If the USD = 2 CAD, then GOG's pricetag would be $30 USD and I'd pay $60 CAD + 2-3%
If the USD = 0.5 CAD, then GOG's pricetag would be $120 USD and I'd pay $60 CAD +2-3%

See? Why does the strength of the dollar matter? I pay the same no matter what. For some reason you seem to think that a weak CAD makes it suck more for me not to be able to pay in CAD which, you speculate, may be why I'm complaining now. But it sucks equally no matter the strength of the dollars.

[url=https://isthereanydeal.com/#/page:game/price?plain=witcheriiiwildhunt]https://isthereanydeal.com/#/page:game/price?plain=witcheriiiwildhunt[/url]

What it shows is that GOG and Steam have had back-to-back exactly equal discounts since release - until last month. In 2016, and counting right now, Steam has had TW3 50% twice and GOG none.

Them's the facts.

If you missed all the sales all of last year, don't bitch, just pick it up on Steam.

Cheers.

I understand all that. It doesn't matter if you buy on GOG. As you said, you only pay the 2%-3% exchange fee, regardless of the exchange rate. It does matter if you buy on steam, where there is a fixed regional price. Let's say it's 10 CAD and 10 USD. In that case it *is* woth buying there over a USD-only store if and only if CAD is weaker than USD and it's not worth buying there if CAD is stronger than USD (exchange fees aside).

I think we're both on the same page here.

I didn't mean it sucks more. But once the CAD becomes strong enough it does become more worthwhile to pay the 2-3% currency exchage fees than to buy a fixed regional price on steam.

I hope if you decide to boycott GOG now out of principle you still boycott GOG then.

EDIT:
Just to illustrate with an example:


Steam: 10USD, fixed 12CAD
GOG: 10USD, variable (10*exchange_rate)+2% CAD

So with the exchange rate being now about 1.4CAD to USD, you find Steam cheaper, because on GOG you pay 14CAD + 2% fees.

But, if the USD get weaker and exchange rates drops to 1-to-1, then on steam you'll still be paying fixed 12 CAD, but on GOG you'd be paying 10 CAD + 2%, that's 10.20 CAD

So in this case of course you'd still demand GOG allows payment in CAD to remove the exchange fees, but would you still, out of principle, pay 12CAD on Steam rather than 10.20CAD on GOG?
Sorry for speculating, but your thread did coincide with lots more (just scroll the first few pages of general discussion) of Canadians asking for regional prices like Steam, because they are "more fair". So I had reason to assume yours is just like theirs especially since on your first post you didn't mention any exchange fees, just the price difference (which is due to regional pricing).

If your complaint is really the exchange fees only, then I do apologize. And I do agree that CAD and other currencies should be included (without regional pricing) since I myself found it annoying to pay the 1.75% my bank took for converting USD to EUR.

But if the exchange rate changes then the fixed price on Steam changes as well.

You seem to think that Steam will continue to charge $12 (in your example), when in fact they'd change the fixed price to $14.

If 10 USD = 14 CAD, why would Steam be charging $12 CAD? The only thing I can think of is if the CAD plummets like 20c in one day or something ridiculous like that, and they haven't had time to adjust the fixed price.

That seems to be the disconnect that we're having.

Yes. That's the disconnect.

Steam, unlike GOG, doesn't (or rather rarely does) change its regional price with the exchange rate. If it's n CAD, m USD, p EUR and q GBP then it remains this way regardless of the actual exchange rate. GOG on the other hand updates those on a regular basis. This thread is the best example. The pre sale price of Witcher 3 is on Steam 59.99 USD and 59.99 CAD, despite the exchange rate being close to 1.4.

That's what was happening 2-3 years ago when the US dollar was at its weakest. The prices in other currencies were fixed at higher value than the exchange rate (much higher than the 2-3%, it was up to 15-20% in some cases). People in Canada, Europe, Australia started complaining (if 10$ = 7euro, why should Steam be charging 9) about fixed regional prices and the "no regional prices" became one of GOG's rallying calls.

Okay, now I understand what you were getting at when you were speculating that I only care because of the weak dollar. I didn't realize Steam didn't frequently change their CAD prices in accordance with the exchange rate.

But the Witcher 3 on GOG isn't 59.99 USD for me, as you suggested. Rather, it's 44.99 USD. Doesn't that mean GOG is charging regional prices? Unless by "regional prices" you mean prices in that region's currency (e.g. Euro).

And if GOG is charging me 44.99 USD, doesn't that mean GOG is taking a 15 USD loss on my purchase compared to if they sold it to an American? I assume Americans are charged 59.99 USD?

Cool, glad that's cleared :) And I apologize for jumping to conclusions. It was refreshing to talk to someone who understand how exchange rates work.

GOG is a bit strange when it comes to regional prices.

Normally, it converts USD to other currency at the exchange rate, which is updated regularly (it's still not exact, they want to have nice round prices like 7.99 euro instead of 7.84, but generally it's pretty close).

The first exception is that for *some* games, some countries pay the fixed regional steam price. e.g.

Witcher 3 fixed price on steam: fixed 59.99 USD, fixed 59.99EUR

Witcher 3 price on GOG:
fixed 59.99 USD for USA
fixed 59.99 EUR for Europe (or 65.39USD if you choose to pay in USD; this is according to the exchange rate)
Similarly for Australia, New Zealand, UK...

In these cases to offset the difference, GOG gives back the difference as GOG store credit. This is called their "fair price package".
So in my case I can pay 59.99 EURO, or 65.39 USD and get 4.90 EURO or 5.40USD back in GOG store credit.

The second exception is their "poor country" exception. Basically some "poorer" (note the inverted commas) countries get a discount. This includes Russia and former Soviet Republics (which can pay in USD or Ruble), Czech Republic, Poland, Mexico, Brazil and... (to my enormous surprise) Canada.
e.g. at the moment Witcher 3 can be bought at 15.79$ (or its Ruble equivalent) in Russia and former Soviet Union, 43.59$ in Czech Republic and Poland, 44.99$ in Brazil and Mexico and 46.99$ in Canada.

Now don't ask me why GOG included Canada in the poor country list. Yes it would mean GOG is taking a 15$ loss on your purchase compared to an American. Maybe they did it to encourage Canadians to buy here instead of Steam.

EDIT:
So on further research, it seems that Canada (and Poland, Czech Republic, Brazil and Mexico) are usually not included in the poor country list. Witcher 3 and few other cases are exceptions. Generally it's only Russia and Soviet Republics who get the poorman's discount.

Besides what ZFR said, companies are able to take these losses because projected profits are only from certain main regions. In Canada piracy is legal for instance, so it makes sense that they would try to incentivize you guys as well.

But you have more ethical options. :>

So, since they don't offer the option to pay in CAD, that means I can never get store credit like that? Yeah, that's a common business practice for goods/services that don't have a significant price to produce. It's called price discrimination and it makes perfect business sense.

Digitally distributed games cost as much to produce as the bandwidth required to download the game to the buyer. As such, even selling the game for $5 is nearly $5 in profits. But why charge $5 when you can charge $10? Or $60? Or $1000? Well, obviously, because at a certain point people won't feel like the product is worth that much and/or they can't afford that much. Where is that point? It will differ by location. An average Indian can't afford 60 USD for a game. But they may be able to afford, say, 12 USD for a game. If GOG (or Steam or anyone else) charges 60 USD to an Indian, the Indian simply won't buy the game and GOG gets $0 profits. So they might as well price it at whatever maximizes the units_sold*price_per_unit, even if the price_per_unit is $12, it's still ~$12 in profits that they wouldn't otherwise have if they demanded more money. It'd be different if the goods involved actually cost nearly 60 USD to produce. For example, you can't just sell a car for 3,000 USD in India if it cost 17,000 USD to manufacture. But things like services, digital goods, and highly marked-up products (movie theatre popcorn, clothing, etc.) are prime candidates for price discrimination.

That's all fine and dandy and it happens everywhere and for good reason. What's baffling to me is why GOG lumps Canada in with developing countries like India. That's why I felt a slight whiff of an almost insulting lack of understanding of Canada on the part of GOG. No, because then you'd expect the USD price for Americans to be lower than $59.99 as well. Huh, even more baffling then.

I got 1.25% from the last online purchase I made, and from the approximate difference that GOG appears to charge between Canadian and US customers, with the Canadian price for The Witcher 3 addon being $7.99 USD versus the American price being $9.99 USD. The American USD price is 25% greater than the Canadian price as shown on-site when the site is working correctly. This price difference is supposed to be equivalent to the exchange rate and is updated every now and then. Looking at the Bank of Canada's day noon rate, the USD/CAD exchange rates are worse now than when I last bought something online in USD however. $1.39 currently:

http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/exchange/

Using this rate, the $46.99 game should work out to $65.32 converted to CAD, which is indeed higher than the Steam price for the game which is showing as $59.99 currently for me. It also doesn't include the conversion fees that get charged, nor account for the fact that other banks may offer exchange rates that are more in their favour compared to the Bank of Canada day noon rate. So indeed it appears that if you buy the game at GOG you will be paying more for it than if you bought it on Steam with the current economic climate.

My credit card company has reasonable rates compared to some, but the current exchange rate is higher than I realized too, so I wont be buying any games in CAD any time soon. I do have USD funds but currently no way to pay for things directly with USD so I guess I'll be out of the game marketplace for a while, at least anywhere that only accepts USD.